Live for DJs

Purple · Post by **Purple** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 4:59 pm

kenan,

Tick "always log me in automatically" or something that sounds like it, at the top of the page when you log in next and this will sort out the problem of the software loggin you out all the time.

greysky · Post by **greysky** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 9:45 pm

I've been looking into adding digital technology into my dj set and live seems like the best way to do it but part of me reasoning was that there is a fair bit of music I can only get in mp3. Has anyone played with converting mp3s to .aiff or .wav and used then with Live? Does it sound ok?
And thanks for this killer thread, I wasted half a day of work and learned so much!

kabuki · Post by **kabuki** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 10:00 pm

greysky wrote:I've been looking into adding digital technology into my dj set and live seems like the best way to do it but part of me reasoning was that there is a fair bit of music I can only get in mp3. Has anyone played with converting mp3s to .aiff or .wav and used then with Live? Does it sound ok?
And thanks for this killer thread, I wasted half a day of work and learned so much!

It only sounds as good as the source MP3, but it seems fine to me if the MP3 is highter than 128.

BTW, Greysky, answer and sign the "DJ Forum" poll in thethis general forum...

Thanks!

digitalrust · Post by **digitalrust** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 11:37 pm

greysky wrote:I've been looking into adding digital technology into my dj set and live seems like the best way to do it but part of me reasoning was that there is a fair bit of music I can only get in mp3. Has anyone played with converting mp3s to .aiff or .wav and used then with Live? Does it sound ok?
And thanks for this killer thread, I wasted half a day of work and learned so much!

i've been playing some 192kbps and 128kbps mp3s in my sets. UNTIL i found http://www.beatport.com and ordered WAVs on CD for $.99 a track. great site and interface. their selection seems really good if you're into 4onthefloor, but a bit lacking in the breaks area. hopefully that will change soon. but, i've found plenty of dope tracks!

Guesto · Post by **Guesto** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 12:02 am

Guest says: "i'm working with some more dusty grooves (RAMP, James Mason, Minnie Riperton etc) for a more laidback set, having trouble warping these tracks with live drums"

i personally wouldn't use Live to beat match stuff like Ramp, Minnie, etc... I wouldn't even try it with vinyl beat matching - the best way to play these old jams is just slam them in rough edit style - hell these tunes are so dope that they don't need any DJing technique to get the best out of them.

I've tried warp marking disco tunes and it does produce too many artifacts for my liking - I prefer to cut up disco tracks into usable loops and then use plug-ins on them backed by beats - instant filter disco!

Guesto

audioel · Post by **audioel** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 1:41 am

Hello,

After lurking on this board for a while, I figured it was about time I contributed something.

I've been djing with Live since version 1.0 - a couple of years now at least. I am a producer and performer in San Francisco, mainly interested in electro, minimal techno, ebm, acidhouse, and weird funky non-house music. I also tutor and teach classes on using Live (see http://www.robotspeak.com)

al3x wrote:
I saw that someone else was taking a shot at rhythmically odd stuff like Akufen. I spin mostly "quirky" electronic music, very little straight-up 4/4 techno or house, so most of the stuff I play is laden with polyrhythms. I've been trying to get a couple of dubby tech-house tracks with complex beats to mix in Live, and despite marking out their basic rhythm they still didn't match up quite right. It could just be that the two tracks don't jive, but I managed to get a decent enough mix going in Traktor just to test. So Question 1: can anyone comment on DJing more rhythmically complex tracks with Live?

I play lots of minimal dubby tech-house stuff, and drop in the ocasional glitchy mess.

Try to find "the one" in the tracks, and see if you can place some markers roughly at the same intervals in the 2 clips (every 4 or 8 bars maybe). If the kicks or bass clash, try using some EQ to cut the lows on the track you're bringing in.

If the track jumps meter or tempos, sometimes I split it into multiple clips, and manually recreate the arrangement to maintain sync with other audio.

Lots of times, I'll have some glitchy dubby loops from say Pole, and just drop in a simple 808-sounding 4/4 loop under it, just so I can drop that type of stuff on a dancefloor.

al3x wrote: Secondly, how do you negotiate big jumps in BPM without getting a really tweaked, pitched-up sound? Say I want to go from the aforementioned "Slow Motion" at roughly 76BPM (real slow!) and mix atmospherically into a tech-house track that's around 130BPM once the beat kicks in. It seems like when I ramp up the BPM towards the end of "Slow Motion" I'm gonna get that "33 played at 45" kinda sound. I guess it also begs the question of whether DJing in Live is really suited to atmospheric mixes, or if the beat/bar-oriented design behind the warp marker setup is really only friend to beat-matching? I guess you could just play some clips without warping on, but there's got to be something I'm missing.

I guess that's it for the moment. The Ableton-provided "DJing With Live" tutorial could use an update in light of all this! A codified how-to, preferably with lots of screenshots, would be really helpful for this advanced use of Live.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

One trick that I use to change the tempo is to not warp or loop the last track in a tempo range. Say the first 4 songs in your set are 90bpm, then you want to take the set to 130. The last song should be edited to drop in on the one (make sure the intro is an even number of bars - 2, 4, 8, etc), and have warp/loop turned off. Once the track is in and playing (as a long one-shot clip), you can turn the tempo up, and get ready to bring the next warped clip in at your higher tempo. Wait for the point in your unwarped clip where you can mix in, trigger the next clip, and fade.

Make sense?

digitalrust · Post by **digitalrust** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 11:04 pm

for those of you that were having trouble with setting warp markers for long pieces, i found this odd bug that was confusing me until last night. this workaround makes setting warp markers for an entire track much simpler.

so, my usual routine is that i set the first warp marker on the one or any downbeat and then one at bar 9. this is supposed to show you what the original tempo is in the clip properties without messing with the tap tempo function. but the original tempo display doesn't change in live 3 for some reason. this whole time i thought that i was doing something wrong or that this function wasn't something actually in the program. but i found that if you then click anywhere on the arragement page to delesect the clip and then click it again and the change is there all of a sudden.

weird. but now that i know this, it makes setting warp markers a breeze.

hope that helps. if i didn't explain too well i can. lemme know.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 1:24 pm

This is an AWSOME thread. My name is DJ Melodic & I spin Soul Music & Hip Hop (Raw Soul)... I have had the pleasure of using Ableton for about 7 months now. It was great for me when I was producing the mixes on a syndicated radio show that touched over 10 cities in the US.

It is great to hear from other open minded DJs on this forum... As you can guess, I get lots of resistance when other peers find out that i am using a PC to do my mixes. But, I ran into the same type of resistance when I began spinning CD's in my sets years ago. Having a forum like this makes it easir to recognize the vision of being a DJ / Producer hybrid...

Thanks
Digital DJ Melodic
www.Digital-DJs.com

www.Digital-DJs.com · Post by **www.Digital-DJs.com** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 1:35 pm

Guesto wrote:Guest says: "i'm working with some more dusty grooves (RAMP, James Mason, Minnie Riperton etc) for a more laidback set, having trouble warping these tracks with live drums"

i personally wouldn't use Live to beat match stuff like Ramp, Minnie, etc... I wouldn't even try it with vinyl beat matching - the best way to play these old jams is just slam them in rough edit style - hell these tunes are so dope that they don't need any DJing technique to get the best out of them.

I've tried warp marking disco tunes and it does produce too many artifacts for my liking - I prefer to cut up disco tracks into usable loops and then use plug-ins on them backed by beats - instant filter disco!

Guesto

NOT SO FAST Guesto!!!

I have had HUGE success in getting Ableton to work with old skool beats like Ramp, Minnie... etc. In fact click this link for a sound sample at about the 6:20 minute mark, i do a perfect blend with a Ramp song "Everybody Loves The Sunshine". I follow this with a Barry White cut & then Patrice Rushen. All 70's songs with live drumming.

There are some tricks i use to making perfect blends vs using these songs in actual live sets. I would be willing to share if anyone is interested...

One
Digital DJ Melodic
www.Digital-DJs.com

kenan · Post by **kenan** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 2:31 pm

Nah. We don't need no more stinkin' tips. We already know that it can't be done. What you say is new and different, and therefore we must reject it.

On the other hand....

Bring the old-skool tips!

-kenan

al3x · Post by **al3x** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 3:41 pm

Thanks for your advice, audioel. Sounds like we're spinning very similar stuff!

I was getting quite frustrated with this whole concept. I kept almost getting it - having tracks that would line up for a measure or two and then slowly get out-of-sync, despite what I thought were correctly placed warp markers. Then my friend, who's become a real Live guru, showed me his approach to laying warp markers throughout an entire track. Nothing was too different than what's been discussed here, but whereas most folks in this thread have been talking about only nailing down markers every 8 bars or so, my friend and I had much better results going almost measure-by-measure, sometimes quite zoomed-in. I found it actually took roughly the same amount of time, and the results were perfect! So don't be afraid to zoom in quite close or get "between phrases" - for really rhythmically complex music it seems to be a necessity.

What I'd still like a clear answer on is whether or not to set a clip's original BPM before turning on warp and loop modes for that clip. I found the technique someone described of tapping in the BPM pretty helpful for my personal reference, but it didn't seem to help Live lay more accurate warp markers automatically.

Purple · Post by **Purple** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 3:57 pm

Hey Mr. One/www.Digital-DJs.com, yes - please share those tips with us!

kenan · Post by **kenan** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 5:42 pm

Hey al3x,

I begin the warping by tapping the tempo for a few bars. This gives me a rough idea of the tempo, say 123.86 bpm. I then figure my tapping wasn't all that accurate and round to 124 by typing in 124 into the master tempo. Then I move to the clip and press 'warp'. Then in the grid view, I drag the first warp marker and align it to the first beat. Next I move to bar 4 or 5 and look to see if that is grid marker is aligned with the correct beat (note that I'm talking about grid markers, not the yellow warp markers). If it is, I'll quickly scroll through the rest of the song looking for misaligned grid markers. When I find a bad grid marker, I'll gently realign it. I then look over the whole song again. If all looks ok then I'm done.

If not, then I go back to the beginning and start laying down warp markers. I move through the song in 4 bar increments by setting the loop region to be 4 bars and then using the 'up' arrow to jump to the next 4 bar section (this works when the grid view is the selected window). For each 4 bar section I lay down only as many warp markers as needed. I often can get away with only 1 marker at the beginning and one at the end.

Oh and don't forget to save the new settings with the clip.

Hope this helps.

-kenan

digitalrust · Post by **digitalrust** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 7:16 pm

hmm, the thing is that i haven't found the tap tempo button to be so accurate. i find it's easier to set the first warp marker and the another one at 5 or 9. then deselect the clip and reselect it. then the original tempo should be dead on. then i set additional markers as needed.

kabuki · Post by **kabuki** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 4:38 pm

digitalrust wrote:so, my usual routine is that i set the first warp marker on the one or any downbeat and then one at bar 9. this is supposed to show you what the original tempo is in the clip properties without messing with the tap tempo function. but the original tempo display doesn't change in live 3 for some reason. this whole time i thought that i was doing something wrong or that this function wasn't something actually in the program. but i found that if you then click anywhere on the arragement page to delesect the clip and then click it again and the change is there all of a sudden.

weird. but now that i know this, it makes setting warp markers a breeze.

hope that helps. if i didn't explain too well i can. lemme know.

What is happening in Live 3 taht causes the tempo in the track to read incorrectly is this:

Live will show the BPM for the WARP MARKER selected. When you apply and move the selected warp marker, you are changing the tempo for the section of track BEFORe htat marker, but the tempo reads for the section AFTER the marker selected (your 2nd marker). You want the tempo of the 1st marker. Select the first marker and it will give you the correct reading. By selecting arrange and then selecting the track again, you are resetting your reference point to the 1st marker...

???

I hope that is clear...

Live for DJs

dusty grooves

Re: Comments and Questions

Awesome Thread

Re: dusty grooves